


and my back has been breaking (from this heavy heart)

by easystreets



Category: Friends (TV)
Genre: Coming Out, M/M, S1, What Happens In Vegas Stay In Vegas, Yearning, usually
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:26:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25936621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/easystreets/pseuds/easystreets
Summary: In which Chandler comes out, and it doesn't go as horribly as expected.-He could be exactly like his father.The thought makes Chandler sick at times, leaning over the recycling bin in his office or nearly dangling his tie into the toilet at home. Sometimes, it works its way under his skin, and he spends the entire day antsy and on edge, waiting for the question-- that question-- that people have spat at him since his fourth grade class discovered a newspaper clipping of Charles Bing’s britches as he leant over the substitute gym teacher.“Are you gay?”
Relationships: Chandler Bing/Joey Tribbiani
Comments: 20
Kudos: 186
Collections: Gen Prompt Bingo Round 18





	and my back has been breaking (from this heavy heart)

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! Quick trigger warning for internalized homophobia. Also a smattering of transphobia from Chandler about his dad, but without malicious intent. Not that that makes it any better, but. 
> 
> This was written for the prompt "heir", for Gen Prompt Bingo Round 18.
> 
> Thanks as always for reading!

He could be exactly like his father. 

The thought makes Chandler sick at times, leaning over the recycling bin in his office or nearly dangling his tie into the toilet at home. Sometimes, it works its way under his skin, and he spends the entire day antsy and on edge, waiting for the question-- that question-- that people have spat at him since his fourth grade class discovered a newspaper clipping of Charles Bing’s britches as he leant over the substitute gym teacher.

“Are you gay?” 

Chandler blinks. The woman next to him in the elevator stares at him pointedly.

“No.” Chandler tries, but it comes out as more of a question. “I prefer the, uh, female persuasion.” 

“Oh,” the woman says. “I guess your wife picked out your cuff-links then. They’re nice, they actually match your outfit.” 

He awkwardly fumbles with his cuff-links and blushes. Yeah, a wife. Something tells Chandler that he won’t ever be getting married. It’s statistically impossible if you think about it: two people out of five billion find each other at the right time, the right place, and fall in genuine love? It’s what people like Ross believe in fervently, that love is true and beautiful and as easy to find as a cheap cup of coffee in New York instead of something unashamed, something uncontrollable and ugly. 

Chandler likes to bury his secrets and keep them close. How can someone love you if they don’t know you? How can someone love a man that’s built out of fragmented VHS tapes of The Late Late Night show and regurgitated insults from high school bullies? Is there even a person to love underneath all of the debris?

“Thanks,” Chandler finally says, wincing. It’s whatever. He probably isn’t gay. Sure, on occasion, he gets those thoughts, those daydreams-- the ones about Joey; the ones about the cashier at that deli on 53rd; about that intern in payroll-- but he doesn’t ever actualize them, and Chandler doesn’t want to be gay, so he isn’t.

The woman smiles at him. “Tell your wife she has good taste.”

“I will.” Chandler promises. The elevator dings, and Chandler frowns, because Joey picked out the damn cuff-links. What does that make him?

-

That night, they have turkey meatballs for dinner, and Chandler valiantly attempts to not relive Thanksgiving ‘78. 

“This is good,” he tells Joey. They probably are-- Joey’s been preparing these and marinating the meat and dicing the vegetables and studiously consulting a dog-eared recipe book from his mother-- but Chandler can’t find it in himself to taste anything other than a heavy sense of dread on the back of his tongue. 

“Thanks,” Joey smiles, beautifully sincere, and Chandler feels something in himself break away, some sort of tension fall. “I think cooking is going to be, like, my new thing from now on..”

“It’s Monica’s thing,” he says, and then immediately regrets it. Joey’s proud face falls. “But!” Chandler continues, quickly stuffing a whole meatball into his mouth. “But I’m sure you guys could both be cooks. It’s not like there’s a rule that there can’t be two good cooks in a friend group, anyway.”

“Yeah.” Joey says, watching Chandler flail. As always, he prepares to toss out a life raft, give Chandler a helping hand. “I mean, I love acting but I don’t wanna be one of those actor guys, where their whole life is about something that isn’t even real.” He draws a smiley face in his mashed potatoes with the tines of his fork. “You know, I want a _thing_ \-- like a hobby or whatever that makes you happy.”

“By that definition, doing crack could be a thing,” Chandler quips, miming a needle plunging into the crook of his arm, and there it is-- Joey’s life raft--. Joey breaks out into a grin and laughs so hard that their knees collide underneath the table. He’s safe, treading water. “What do you think my thing is?”

Joey pauses his mashed potato masterpiece and stares thoughtfully at Chandler. And sure, Chandler suddenly thinks, Joey can be a massive idiot. He’s misplaced an infinite amount of keys; once attempted to adopt a pigeon; regularly sobs whenever they watch Predator and Dillon dies, even though he knows it’s coming. But Joey sees something in other people that Chandler doesn’t. 

Or maybe Chandler used to see it as a kid. Maybe finding hope in other people-- digging deep to discover a delicate trust-- is something that you grow out of the same way you do socks and underwear and Santa. Joey’s disturbing, unwavering faith in Chandler has been going strong since the day they met, and he’s probably the only person that even remotely sees past all of the jokes and sarcasm to see who Chandler really is: a broken miserable shell of a person.

And yet he stays. “I think your thing is…” Joey hems and haws for a moment. He fidgets with the napkins on the table. “I think your thing is being-- well, it’s not being funny.”

“So you’re saying don’t quit my day job?” Chandler tries, but Joey just studies him more intently from across the table. “Here I was, thinking I could make a living at open-mic night at the Punch Line.”

“No,” Joey agrees. “It’s something else. You have-- what did Phoebe call it?”

“Severe anxiety in uncomfortable and awkward situations?”

“I think it’s--”

“Unbalanced chakras?”

“Come on,” Joey frowns, “this is important. In the show biz we call it character development.”

“And in the normal person biz, we call it not defining ourselves by arbitrary things, like cooking or a lack of funniness.” Chandler pushes in his chair. Joey being all serious is weird. Joey not laughing at anything he says and getting that look on his face is unbearably strange. “Joe, this is ridiculous. If you seriously think some deep hobby is the key to life’s--

“I don’t! It’s just, you’ve been all weird lately, and, well, things are changing.” Joey shrugs. “Maybe you’re just finding your thing!” 

“I have not been weird lately. You know what’s weird is that Mrs. Eckhart from 201 hasn’t called me a handsome young man in at _least_ a week. Tell me, Joe: have I lost my boyish charm at last?” Chandler lies right through his teeth. (Well, the Mrs Eckhart thing _is_ true). How much does Joey know? Does he see the blood on Chandler’s lips after he bites them watching Brad Pitt take his shirt off in Fight Club? Does he hear Chandler’s uneven breaths late at night, and the sheath of magazines being thrown under the bed afterward?

The terrible, hopeful part of his mind wanders: does Joey understand what it’s like? Could Joey be…? Is _Chandler_? Could they ever make something like that work? 

“Be serious with me, Chandler.” Joey sighs, and Chandler can’t do this. Not right now. Not here, with his heart racing and thoughts of oh no and what if running rampant through his mind. Maybe not ever. He shoves his dishes towards the general vicinity of the sink and fidgets his jacket on.

“Chandler, where are you going?” Joey says, just standing there, watching him slip on a pair of Joey’s sandals over his socks.

“For a walk.” Chandler says, even though he’s never quite liked the outdoors, and Joey still hasn’t come up with his thing yet. It’s below freezing, too, but his cheeks are burning. Joe calls for him to be safe on his way out, and Chandler tries his best not to hear it.

-

The _thing_ thing bothers him all morning, from when he wakes up and pulls sweaty sheets off, to when he’s brushing his teeth, bumping elbows with Joey, who seems completely unaffected by last night, or at least, better at repressing it than Chandler. He lets the issue dig itself deep under his skin as he pours them both coffee, and allows it to wrap its way around every vein and artery in his body as he divvies out dishes of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, until it’s borderline uncomfortable to breathe and he’s choking down his coffee in hurried gulps.

“Saturday morning, huh?” Joey says, patting him on the shoulder as he sits next to him. His arm brushes against Chandler’s as he spoons cereal into his mouth. He’s not dressed yet, all he’s got on is a pair of emerald boxers and an archaic white t-shirt. Chandler glances at him as he’s reaching for a napkin, and the deep breath he automatically sucks in disgusts him. Joey is his best friend. He doesn’t want to ruin this.

Idly, Chandler wonders how long this is going to last before one of them gets a real girlfriend or Joey makes it big or Chandlers says something irreparably cruel. He’s been waiting for it to break for a while, if he’s being honest. He’s never had a friend like this. His hands feel heavy and lost when he looks at Joey. He doesn’t know how to be himself when he’s around him anymore; everything feels unnatural and false. 

“What should we do today?” Chandler says, relishing the way _we_ feels so natural in his mouth. He wonders if there’ll be a day where it won’t be, where looking at Joey will hurt more than it heals. He hazards a glance at Joey, who’s flipping through the Sports section in the newspaper, and decides that maybe today is the day. 

“Oh!” Joey suddenly says, clapping his hands together. “You know what we should do?”

“We should totally get our nails done, and our hair!” Chandler says, forcing his wrists to become limp. God, he sounds like his dad, or whatever his dad identifies as now. His second mom? His ex-father? Chandler isn’t exactly up-to-date on his gay people terminology, mostly because he’s still pretty certain that he isn’t gay. “I might even get my bikini line waxed.”

That’s what makes all the gay jokes funny: Chandler is super straight. Only a man so confident in his sexuality can say the things he does; only someone who knows themselves well can comment on Val Kilmer’s absolutely _gorgeous_ eyes and straighten his hair and have it be hilarious instead of telling. It is funny. Chandler’s been laughing along at them since the fourth grade when his stupid fucking dad came out, and he’s certainly not going to stop now.

But Joey isn’t laughing. “No, I was thinking we should go on a road trip.”

“Do you own a car?” Chandler asks dryly. 

“We could rent one, or whatever; fly there or something.” Joey waves his arms in the air; for a moment, he looks exactly how Chandler feels most of the time: lost, struggling, his head underwater, no sound but his arms flailing towards the surface. “It’ll be fun, I promise, and we could go-- we could go to Vegas!”

Vegas. Where his fucking dad lives. Chandler sighs, because, yeah, a road trip with Joey would be incredibly fun, but he can’t bring himself to go to a strip club and pretend that he likes it, or flirt with some random woman in the corner of a dark bar. And Joey’s gonna know-- decide that there is in fact something very wrong with Chandler-- and the whole thing will fall apart. 

Chandler looks down into the dark reflection of his coffee mug. The man in there looks solitary and bitter. He looks like a life spent alone, a living room with only one lounger, a dinner table with one plate. He cranes his neck up, and his eyes meet with Joey’s.

Joey is watching him the way he always does lately: like there’s something off about Chandler that everybody knows about but him. “We don’t have to go,” Joey finally says, his voice quiet. “It was just an idea, Chandler.”

It hurts when he says his name. “No!” Chandler yelps, a little too loud and urgent for a Saturday morning with his best friend. “We-- we should go. I want to go, Joey. I really do.”

He can pretend that the women there are pretty. He can pretend that when he’s holding a girl’s hand it means something; he can try to be someone he’s not. Chandler’s been doing that all of his life, what’s another weekend of fake smiles and that grey misery bubbling underneath his skin?

He can do it. He’ll do it for Joey.

“Great,” Joey says. “Just the two of us?”

Chandler nods. “Just the two of us, buddy.”

-

Unsurprisingly, they fly to Vegas. Chandler hates driving anywhere in New York, and he’s not sure he can stand to be completely alone in a car with Joey without screwing something up. The plane ride is fine; it’s silent, Chandler does a crossword while Joey snores in the seat next to him, and they both ignore it when Joey wakes up with his head crooked on Chandler’s shoulder.

“Las Vegas,” Joey remarks, once they’re on the strip. “Wanna drink?”

Chandler stares down at the ground, where there are plenty of strip club advertisements featuring half-dressed women. “Yeah,” he coughs out, following Joey to the nearest bar, The Rainbow. It’s nice inside; the light is soft and breezy, and the music isn’t too loud. 

Joey orders for him, because he knows what Chandler likes, and Chandler stares at the paintings on the wall of the bar. There’s one of a guy wearing a dress that for some reason, catches his eye (not like that), and he leans over to ask the bartender whom he or she is.

“Who-- who is that?” Chandler asks. 

“That’s Marsha P. Johnson. She was a huge participant in the Stonewall Riots,” the bartender explains, grabbing an orange wedge for one of Joey’s ridiculous girly drinks.

Out of sheer curiosity and a perpetual need to keep his mouth running, he asks, “What is a Stonewall Riot?” 

“You don’t know?” The bartender says, looking up from a bottle of grenadine to frown at him. “This is a gay bar, man. That’s a huge part of our history.”

“I’m--” Chandler casts a desperate eye at Joey, who’s currently discussing the Mets with some guy wearing a Rangers jersey and completely oblivious to his suffering. “I’m not gay. I mean, there’s a _thing_. But I’m not." The bartender frowns at him, and he tries again. "My dad is, though.” Chandler offers.

The bartender looks up at him like he sees guys like Chandler walk in every night. “A thing?”

“I mean… I have this best friend,” Chandler mumbles. He plays with the napkin in front of him. “And I could conceivably see myself being with him. But he’s not gay, and I really like him as-- as a person. And I like women, so.” He shrugs, like _what can you do_ , and the bartender looks at him with pity.

“Just because you like women doesn’t mean you can’t like men.” The bartender says, and okay, Chandler was aware that that was a possibility for others, but never for himself. “It’s called bisexuality. You go both ways.”

“Like Caroline from Shortland Street?”

“Sure,” the bartender says. He hands Chandler his drink. “Is the guy who ordered for you the roommate?”

Chandler nods, taking a sip of his mojito. Extra lime. Nice. Joe knows him so well. “Yeah. Joey.”

“And you’re sure he isn’t gay?”

Chandler sputters, because Joey is probably the straightest guy he knows, a total ladies man, he watches basketball games and actually understands what’s going on for Christ’s sake, but then he cranes his neck to where the bartender is looking with a Cheshire Cat grin on his face and--

Joey’s kissing a guy, his back pressed against the wall, his hands crawling up the dude’s back.

“Wow.” Chandler remarks. Against his own better judgement and the sinking feeling dredging itself deep in his heart, he watches. Joey is a good-- no, _great_ kisser. His hands lap at the edge of the guy’s t-shirt. Chandler frivolously imagines what it would be like: would Joey kiss him gently or as rough as he’s macking this guy? Would he brush Chandler up against the wall, would he be touchy and physical, or quick and needy? The guy says something like _let’s get out of here_ , and Joey blushes, shakes his head, and points towards Chandler.

Oh fuck. He quickly swivels back towards the bartender. In one extradited gulp, he downs his mojito.

“Are you sure you’re not at the very least bi-curious?” The bartender reaches for his glass. “Not that it’s my place, but… you seemed pretty into that.”

“Maybe.” Chandler admits. “I wish I wasn’t.”

“Speaking from experience, it gets better if you actually, y'know deal with it,” the bartender says. “Go talk to your roommate.”

Thankfully, Joey has untangled himself from the guy and so Chandler doesn’t have to awkwardly introduce himself the way he would to the numerous one-night-stands Joey used to bring over. What ever had happened to those?

“Hey,” Chandler says. His drink is sweating with condensation in his burning hands. “What’s up?”

“Uh, not much,” Joey says, sitting down at the nearest booth. “You okay? Ya look weird.”

“‘M fine.” Chandler bites his lime and allows the juice to sting his bitten lips. It’s distracting. “How… how was that?”

“Kissing that guy?” Joey reaches for a peanut like it’s no big deal, like he didn’t just swap spit with another man. Chandler wants so badly to be callous like him, to live life without decades worth of worries and that voice in his head going _there is something deeply wrong with you, Chandler Bing, you are immensely defective, just look at you, look at your fucking parents._

“Yeah,” Chandler tries. “Looked like you were having fun. I didn’t-- didn’t know you went that way.” His heart is racing, and it’s not even him coming out or whatever. It’s Joey, which is somehow a thousand times worse, because now one of them is gay for sure, and the possibility-- of having something, like Ross and Rachel but with _Die Hard_ and being able to share boxer shorts-- is incredibly real.

“I’m bi or whatever,” Joey says. “Never thought to tell you. I guess I was worried you’d be weird about it, but when you’re in Vegas…” He trails off, shrugging, and leaving Chandler to think _what the actual fuck._

Joey and him discuss pretty much everything, from the dynamics of the group, to Keynesian theory which Joey somehow comprehends better than Chandler, to baseball. He’s popped zits for Joey; Chandler’s drunkenly thrown up on Joey’s favorite pair of Levis before. They’re best friends. It’s not like Chandler is homophobic. Does everyone else know? Do they discuss Chandler, do they dissect him and his discrepancies while he’s in the bathroom and running late and put him and his innumerable issues back together when he steps back into the room? 

“Oh,” he says. “Oh. I’m sorry, Joe.” 

“It’s fine.” Joey says, even though it really isn’t. “A lot of people are weird about stuff like that.”

Chandler takes a long sip of his drink before he finds his words. “Do-- does anyone else know?”

He’s half-expecting an answer like, _no, buddy, just you_. But then Chandler remembers that nothing has been the same for the past handful of months and expecting things ( a normal Thanksgiving; a dad who gave a shit) usually leads to disappointment.

“Well, Phoebe is, so she could kind of just… tell.” Joey admits. He counts on his fingers, mouthing unintelligible bits of names.

“Phoebs?” Chandler spits. 

“Uh, yeah,” Joey looks at him like it’s the most damn obvious thing in the world, and then continues. “My ma, my sisters, ‘cept for Gina because she’s _Catholic_ Catholic, Gunther by accident, one of the guys at my wrap party for that miniseries about the French people that never went anywhere, Ross’s been trying to get me to go out with this curator dude from his work _forever_ , Rachel because well, her too, and Monica, I think, but we’ve never really talked about it, you know?”

“What?” No, he doesn’t _know_. “Rach-- Monica? Phoebe. You?”

“Yeah,” Joey says. “I guess your thing is being the straight friend or whatever.”

Fuck, Chandler thinks. How can it not bother Joey? How has he not known? 

“I don’t know.” Chandler says. “It’s-- a thing.”

“Your thing is being straight? Or being straight is a… _thing_ for you?” Joey asks, clearly perplexed. 

Chandler regrets ever opening his damn mouth. “Uh.” He regrets ever having Joey move in. “I’m not sure--”, he regrets doing this and being like this because it fucking hurts Joey and he’s not even sure who he is anymore. “If I’m straight?”

“That’s cool,” says Joey. “I get it.” He kind of probably does understand the painful repression that Chandler might be fucking dealing with, and he did grow up Catholic and all, so maybe Joey isn’t the worst person in the world to come out to. Maybe things will be okay. “It’s hard. Do you wanna talk about it?”

“I think I want to… try it.” 

“Kissing a guy?” Joey asks, like the answer could’ve been _paragliding_ or _olives_.

“Yeah.” 

“Well, we should go to a gay bar.” 

“Joe, this _is_ a gay bar.”

Joey looks around, from the pastel streamers to the framed pictures of gay activists to the giant flags tacked up to the walls. “Oh, really?”

Chandler sighs and attempts to suffocate a laugh. “Yeah, really.” He feels lighter.

“Well who do y’wanna kiss?” Joey asks, leaning across the table, taking a sip of the last dregs of Chandler’s drink. 

Chandler scans the room. Joey’s guy has skunked off to some corner to smoke. There’s the bartender, which, no. A handful of girls are crowded around the counter, which Chandler would maybe go for (since he guesses he’s bisexual or whatever now) but since that really isn’t the objective, he passes on them. Which leaves Joey.

“I mean--” Chandler says, and he wants to say, _maybe this is a bad idea, maybe I could stay in the closet forever_ , but then Joey is kissing him and his lips taste like mint and that stupid girly drink he always gets at bars, and Chandler can’t think anymore.

They finally stop after what feels like ten seconds but is probably a minute, and Chandler sighs contentedly. “Should we do this again next Saturday?”

Joey grins. “I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time.”

He tries to think of something light, something funny, and for the first time in a long time, comes up empty-handed. “Really?”

“Yeah.” Joey sighs. He kicks Chandler’s leg from across the table.

“Okay.” Chandler says. “Okay, so what are we? What’s our thing?”

“We’re Chandler and Joey,” Joey says, like it’s obvious, and maybe it is. Maybe it always has been, but Chandler’s been too terrified to see it. Maybe he’s refused to, hidden his head away from it all, buried it in the sand. But these things have a way of sneaking up on you.

“Cool,” says Chandler. “We’re Chandler and Joey.” He wrestles his mojito away from Joey. So what if he’s bisexual? Chandler is nothing like his father. Chandler is nothing like his father, because for the first time in his life, he isn't scared.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If you have anything to say, leave a comment! This is my first Friends fic. 
> 
> [If you enjoy the roommates to what-are-we to lovers dynamic, I recommend with all my heart watching It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, or reading Mac/Dennis fics in that fandom. They're where I got The Rainbow from, and there's a canonically gay character in the show who's experience is realistic and involves dancing as a way of coming out. Amazing, right? ]


End file.
